​The Good, the bad and the influencers

​By: Joshua Tecson

​One of the biggest advancements and trends we currently have in marketing is teaming up with an influencer to promote a business or product. How influencers work is basically you pay them an x amount and they will promote your product on whatever social media they use. Depending on the follower count the cost per post varies. Here is a small breakdown on cost per influencer depending on follower count for Instagram

• Nano-influencer: 1,000-10,000 followers; cost: $10-100 per post
• Micro-influencer: 10,000-50,000 followers; cost: $100-$500 per post
• Mid-tier influencer: 50,000-500,000 followers; cost: $500-$5,000 per post
• Macro-influencer: 500,000-1,000,000 followers; cost: $5,000-$10,000 per post
• Mega-influencer 1,000,000+ followers; cost: $10,000+

In addition to mentioned above, different types of influencers can do the following: Brand Ambassador, sponsored content, and shout-outs. With a brand ambassador you and the influencer will co-exist and be more connected with one another (A long term partnership). Sponsored content is basically just letting the influencer take the wheel and they will just mention how you sponsored them when creating their content. Lastly, we have shout-outs which is what it sounds like, a shoutout. With influencers a lot of pros and cons come into play, lets talk about the pros first.
One of the biggest pros is that it is easy to connect with a certain target market. A good example of this would be if you wanted to get a tech item/business promoted you would reach out to a tech influencer. Finding an influencer is extremely easy, just pick the platform you want and search for keywords. That will then guide you to different influencers. Another pro is that having influencers builds trust and credibility with your audience. When it comes to people some of them feel as though they are connected to the influencers (In some cases role models). By connecting your brand to them, you are instantly connecting your brand to those people. Depending on how you go about it when doing influencer marketing- it could be less expensive. In addition, the “post” on a platform last forever. If you pay an influencer for a post shoutout, years later that post will still be there. Influencers are also great for startup companies; in some situations, you’ll only be working with one person and that is the influencer. You could compare this if you were to go with a marketing agency, you would have to interact with lots of different people. Lastly, word of mouth is a lot easier since a social platform is of course social.
Now we will talk about the cons. The first is a potential con, since the influencer is tied to your brand, if they do something bad in the public eye your image could be affected. The connection between your brand and the influencer will be dependent on one another. Another potential con is the simple fact that some influencers are hard to work with no matter their status within the social platform. In some cases we hear that the influencer is a big diva. Another con would be how influential are some of these influencers? We can argue that this is a pro as mention above but it can also be a con in some cases. Also with relation to how influential a person is, are all their followers even real? Some of the follower accounts could just be ghost accounts. In addition, another con would be are the influencers able to cross platform? When I say cross platform, some influencers have a bigger following in different social media sites. I took the liberty of checking some TikTok influencers, and in some cases their follower numbers are significantly higher in TikTok compared to their other sites. Cost would be a lot more as you would have to spend more on influencers if you want to be heard on more social media platforms. The last con is results don’t happen overnight. Depending on the influencer, the results might have to take awhile for it to show (Numbers wise).